A new report claims that the full title of DS2 is, in fact, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. I would not believe it if not for the fact that we're talking about a Hideo Kojima game here, and the name seems to be a reference to a 64-year-old film.
So far, Death Stranding 2 has only been referred to as a "working title" for the game, but according to the usually reliable billbil-kun over at Dealabs, we'll be hearing a new, formal announcement about the game very soon - a machine translated version of the French report says "we estimate that it will occur within the next 15 days."
One part of the report is fully in English, though - the full title of the new game, which is said to be Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. At first blush, "On the Beach" seems a little goofy and on the nose as a video game title, even when the series prominently features a semi-literal Beach serving as a sort of space between the worlds of the living and the dead.
But given director Hideo Kojima's long-standing obsession with film, the title makes a lot of sense. On the Beach is a 1959 film (based on a novel released two years earlier) which depicts the apocalyptic aftermath of a full-on nuclear war. Directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire, the film offers a grim take on the nuclear anxieties of the Cold War era.
I can't say for sure that Death Stranding 2 is named after this movie, but it's exactly the kind of film reference Kojima loves to throw into his games. And On the Beach has clearly been on Kojima's mind recently, too - he tweeted about the film multiple times last year, describing it as a personal "favorite."
Tonight, I’ll rewatch my favorite, “On The Beach”. pic.twitter.com/5Io0tTFk5KAugust 17, 2023
Kojima's Twitter profile notes that "70% of my body is made of movies." Now, it seems that 39% of his video game title is made of a movie, too.
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